Description

Drug prohibition emerged at the same time as the discovery of film, and their histories intersect in interesting ways. This book examines the ideological assumptions embedded in the narrative and imagery of one hundred fictional drug films produced in Britain, Canada, and the U.S. from 1912 to 2006, including Broken Blossoms, Reefer Madness, The Trip, Superfly, Withnail and I, Traffik, Traffic, Layer Cake, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Trailer Park Boys, and more. Boyd focuses on past and contemporary illegal drug discourse about users, traffickers, drug treatment, and the intersection of criminal justice with counterculture, alternative, and stoner flicks. She provides a socio-historical and cultural criminological perspective, and an analysis of race, class and gender representations in illegal drug films.

This illuminating work will be an essential text for a wide range of students and scholars in the fields of criminology, sociology, media, gender and women’s studies, drug studies, and cultural studies.

Reviews

"Susan Boyd has done it again! In Drug Films she provides all interested in the human community’s exploration and use of drugs, with cinematic revelations about Hollywood’s collaboration with the government in controlling human inventiveness in expanding consciousness and developing analgesics." - Dennis Sullivan, Institute for Economic and Restorative Justice

"Fear of drugs has been carefully cultivated in myth and propaganda for over a century. The construction and manipulation of that fear is why punitive prohibition persists despite its savage failures. Susan Boyd's important new book shows how film has played a starring role in this drug drama. Her insightful analysis of so many classic movies is so well written and entertaining you hardly notice that it is a work of deep scholarship, about drug problems themselves as well as their cinematic representations." -- Craig Reinarman, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz, author of Crack In America

About the Author

Susan C. Boyd is an Associate Professor in Studies in Policy and Practice and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Victoria's Centre for Addiction Research in BC, Canada. She is the author of From Witches to Crack Moms: Women, Drug Law, and Policy (2004) and Mothers and Illicit Drugs: Transcending the Myths (1999).